Fostering in-process inspection during process planning using tolerance charting

Integrated development of machining and inspection plans is essential in dynamic manufacturing environments, especially when right first time manufacturing is required. In this work, a methodology, based on a new and extended use of tolerance charting, that allows incorporation of in-process inspection operations to improve process plans is presented. The methodology proposes the transfer of the manufacturing specification tolerance between surfaces to specification tolerances established between these surfaces and a common reference system. In this way, all variability sources originated by part locating and fixturing can be separately considered from the ones originated by the process-machine system. This circumstance allows a more accurate calculation of operation capability indexes and eases the analysis and improvement of critical operations. To prove methodology potential, an application case is showed. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.